Stay Out of Our Bedrooms!—Homosexuals Weigh in on Gay Debate

Members of Jamaica’s homosexual community have added
their voice to recent calls for the island’s buggery laws to be repealed,
saying Jamaicans are being hypocritical on the issue. “We really are a very
sexual nation, just like anybody else, and we have everything here,” said a
Jamaican lesbian who writes poetry and stories under the name Adreana Ingram.
“Jamaicans are privately tolerant and publicly intolerant because they have
to save face. I am just sick and tired of the hypocrisy.”

The state has no right to police what happens in the
bedrooms of consenting adults, argued lesbian and gay rights activist Platinum
Richards, who represented Jamaican gays at the Gay Pride parade in New York
this year. “I think it’s total crap! People have anal sex every
day—whether it’s woman and man, man and man. Even women and women have
anal sex,” Richards said.

The law against buggery is already being ignored, and
taking it off the books would have no major impact, Ingram argued. As an
example, she cited ‘Freaky Friday’ at some go-go clubs, saying the law was
being broken at least once a week here in Jamaica. “So let’s just get real
again and stop being hypocritical,” she said. “And why is the state trying
to legislate something that is private and in our bedrooms?”

A member of the management committee of the Jamaican
Forum for Lesbians, Allsexuals and Gays (J-FLAG), who asked that his name not
be used, also wanted to see the buggery law repealed. “The sodomy laws need
to go. The government is interested in invading people’s private life, and
what two consulting adults do behind closed doors in their time is exactly
their business,” he said. “Also, I would like to see the church being very
proactive in setting a standard tone that discrimination and advocating
violence on any level cannot be tolerated.”

J-FLAG was founded in December of 1998 and is the first
organisation of its kind to serve the interest of homosexuals and bisexuals in
the island. Their activities include the provision of counselling and referral
services for homosexual persons and their families, and collaborating with
international groups to effect change in the discrimination against gays.

Jamaica is under increasing pressure to accept
homosexuality and homosexuals, a move that is being strongly resisted by a
largely homophobic society. ‘Homophobia’ is the term gays use to describe
persons opposed to their sexual preferences.

But academics have warned that the pressure, from rights
groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and British-based
OutRage! may trigger a backlash against gays who live here. Richards said she
was prepared to face anything that comes her way.

“Even when blacks were fighting for freedom you (had) a
backlash... We (homosexuals in Jamaica) will receive some backlash because
whatever views heterosexuals have are deeply embedded,” she said. But Ingram
argued that the situation “cannot possibly get any worse than it already
is”.

“There are always gay clusters at straight events
because, by its very nature, you have gay people living in the society,” she
told the Sunday Observer. “We may chat behind their backs or whatever, but I
don’t think there is going to be any greater backlash because at the end of
the day everybody has some relative, some friend or somebody that they have
slept with (who is homosexual or bisexual). We are just too interconnected
here.”

The JFLAG executive theorised that Human Rights Watch’s
81-page report, “Hated to Death—Homophobia, Violence and Jamaica’s
HIV/AIDS Epidemic”, had forced Jamaicans to admit that there was a problem
with how gays and people living with HIV/AIDS were being treated in Jamaica.

“It has opened up a can of worms, so to speak, so that
everybody can now get a look at what is happening,” he said. “It isn’t
just some people coming together to say something that isn’t happening; and
the fact that Human Rights Watch could have put together an 81-page report,
interviewing over 31 people, shows that there is some truth to what is
happening.”

The HRW report was released on November 16, sparking
heated debate on the issue on the treatment of homosexuality locally. The
Jamaican government rejected the report, essentially telling HRW to keep out
of Jamaica’s affairs. But the bottom line is that members of the gay
community simply want heterosexuals to accept their lifestyle. If not, gays
hope that heterosexuals will, at least, just leave them alone.

“I would like to see a spirit of live and let live, and
just a recognition and an acceptance that there are variations in human
sexuality just like there are variations in people’s personality, belief in
religion, physicality, taste in food. There are just variations,” Ingram
said.

For Richards, an intelligent debate is vital. “I would
like the media to seek out people who are versed and intellectual enough to
give them the correct outlook on whatever the topic is. At the end of it all,
people will gain a better understanding of what it is like being gay,” she
said. “People tend to think that we get up and say, ‘Oh I am gay today and
tomorrow I am not going to be gay’. It is not like that; it is who you
are.”